When I was a young lad, I had a crush on Salma Hayek so large it rivalled the size of her ample… talent? And by talent I mean boobs, if you know what I mean. It’s been some years, and Salma has since shown us many more awkward, stilted performances and even fell victim to pregnancy for a short while, both of which have irrevocably tainted the love we once shared. Luckily, her semi-lesbian, fully-awesome relationship with Penelope turned me on to a beauty with the talent to back it up. Her boobs aren’t bad either, if you catch my drift. She’s 80% of the reason to watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona, she’s been working her way up to this kind of recognition for a little while now, and she’s gonna take home the naked golden man very soon. And by naked golden man I mean hopefully me, if you follow where I’m going with this.
Who Should Win
Viola Davis (Doubt)
They must've photoshopped out the snot for the marketing promo.
It’s true that Taraji P. Henson, Sulmoney’s favorite in this category, was unquestionably the best part about Benjamin Button, but being the classier gentleman, I’m gonna go with the black actress who gave us something a little deeper than the borderline-racist Aunt Jemima mammy figure. It’s almost an insult that Amy Adams’s name is anywhere near Viola Davis’s in the nominations for this category. Ms. Davis has precisely one scene in the entire film, but in less than 15 minutes of screen time she delivers an incredibly complex, emotionally-challenging performance, leaving an impression that will stay with me much longer than the performance Amy Adams cobbled together from the deleted scenes of Enchanted. And she did it all with snot running down her face the whole time.
Who Got Snubbed
Well I haven’t yet seen Rachel Getting Married, so I can’t comment on Sulmoney’s choice, but on the whole I’m gonna say this category looks pretty snub-free to me. I haven’t seen everything out there, so it’s entirely possible that I missed something, but to me it looks like the men pretty much stole the spotlight this year. Damn you, paternalistic society with your glass ceilings and whatnot!
I’m sorry, I know at this point it’s a bit of a clichéd pick, but for what it counts I was excited about this movie when it was just a script, which is long before most…
Slumdog Millionaire
British director Danny Boyle is one of my most envied men in showbusiness. Plenty of people in the world have some sort of remarkable talent, and it’s very easy for a creator to stumble upon a formula that works for him/her only to spend an entire career trying to recapture that lightning in a bottle (see: Guy Ritchie, director of Sulmoney’s fifth favorite movie of 2008, but I’ll come back to him later). The rarest form of creative genius, though, is the one who possesses both the ambition and the ability to tackle any project and still manages to show us something meaningful and original each time. Among them, in my mind: Alfonso Cuarón (Y Tu Mamá También, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Children of Men), Stephen Soderberg (Erin Brockovich, Traffic, Solaris, Ocean’s 11, Che), Joel and Ethan Coen (No Country for Old Men, The Big Lebowski, Raising Arizona) and Danny Boyle (Trainspotting, 28 Days Later, Sunshine, Slumdog Millionaire).
Proof that Danny Boyle is now the biggest white thing in India.
Slumdog Millionaire is much better than it needed to be. The West has been fascinated by India for a long time. Its culture is so loud, colorful and vibrant that it permeates through even in its most watered-down, Americanized portrayals (see: The Darjeeling Limited). The uniquely “exotic” flavor of India combined with some tabla beats and a few heartwrenching, borderline-exploitative shots of absolute poverty would have been enough to satisfy the voyeuristic urges of many moviegoers.
Instead, though, we’re presented with a story that transcends the sum of its parts in every way. Though this movie is far from Bollywood-conventional, that spirit is very much alive in its musicality, in the fantastical rise of Jamal from slumdog to millionaire and of course in the love story between Jamal and Latika. The style of the filmmaking is also impossible to ignore. Much like director Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock Stock & Two Smoking Barrels), Danny Boyle’s filmmaking has always called attention to its slick photography and exceptional music, but unlike Ritchie’s films, that style serves a purpose. It’s cool, yes, but it’s also exhilarating. This isn’t a movie about gangsters talking in pubs, it’s about life, energy and mobility (social and locomotive), and the frenetic camerawork bolstered by A.R. Rahman‘s pounding drum-based rhythms breathe life into the images. Plus M.I.A. is a total badass.
Somewhere down there M.I.A. is still chasing little kids while singing "Paper Planes."
Indians have been making a big fuss over the film’s supposed exploitation of their culture, particularly its darker side, but it’s difficult to sympathize with these critics when Boyle proves with every frame that he just “gets it.” It’s remarkable to me that a British director who had never before visited India and with presumably no personal ties to South Asian culture (except, you know, the whole colonization, Jungle Book, white man’s burden thing) was able to portray India in the most honest and realistic way I’ve ever seen in a narrative feature (and, unfortunately, that includes every Bollywood flick ever made). In addition to telling a stylish and uplifting fairy tale, the film says nearly everything important that there is to say about the ills of modern Indian society, including its obsession with fame and celebrity, the rampant government and police corruption, and of course the huge socioeconomic disparities. That’s not to say that the film’s social commentary is perfect. Someone who doesn’t know any better might walk out of the theater with the impression that everyone in India is either a thief, a liar, a killer or just a first-rate douchebag, given that nearly every Indian Jamal encounters is a bad guy in some way (with a couple exceptions). The film’s heart is in the right place, though, and the task at hand is so enormous that I can forgive its few shortcomings.
Careful kids, those statues are worth more than you are.
I can only guess that a great deal of this film’s success must be due to Danny Boyle’s collaborations with local Indian artists, including his Indian co-director Loveleen Tandan and the legendary Bollywood composer A. R. Rahman. Still, Boyle’s imprint is all over this film, and there’s something to be said about a director who has the intelligence and respect for his subject matter to pick collaborators who will help him do the film right. In my #2 pick I lamented the fact that the Academy overlooked Christopher Nolan for a best director nomination, but even I don’t think he deserved the win. Slumdog Millionaire is one of my favorite films of all time. This is the year of Boyle.
Even though I enjoyed Pineapple Express, I’d be remiss if I didn’t scold Sulmoney for ranking a stoner comedy higher than modern classics on his list like Wall-E, The Wrestler, and RocknRolla. BAM! See what I did there? No? Maybe cookie monster can explain it for you:
I’m actually glad that at least one big summer comedy made it onto Sulmoney’s list, though, because otherwise I wouldn’t have had a chance to discuss them. I’m a notoriously harsh critic of movie comedies, and trips to the cinema have often started with my (so-called) friends arguing over who has to sit next to me because I hardly ever laugh out loud. That said, we got some pretty decent stuff this summer with Pineapple Express (good), Tropic Thunder (better), and Forgetting Sarah Marshall (best). Unlike Sulmoney, I don’t think Pineapple Express succeeded as much as a genre-bending action-comedy, especially because a lot of the action in the last act fell flat for me, but James Franco, Danny McBride and, my personal favorite, Craig Robinson did some hilarious work that at least held up the comedy end. Even though I enjoyed Tropic Thunder more in the theater, I think Pineapple Express will age better.
Shout out also to Role Models, which I still haven’t seen, but expect I’ll really dig. Here’s big #2:
The Dark Knight
This list of my top 10 films of 2008 doesn’t necessarily include the best movies, in order, of last year. It’s simply a list of those films that for whatever reason appealed to my personal tastes more than the rest. The Dark Knight is a flawed film in many ways. It’s too long, it’s a bit too ambitious, it rushes the Two Face storyline, and some of the story elements (particularly the cell-phone mapping at the end) are just a bit too preposterous for the universe it establishes. For all of those reasons, I’m not too upset that The Dark Knight failed to snag a nomination for Best Picture at the 81st Academy Awards, but it’s a complete and utter travesty that director and co-writer Christopher Nolan was not even nominated for the Best Director trophy. If you want a review of The Dark Knight, you have thousands to choose from. Instead, here’s my case for Christopher Nolan as one of the best directors of 2008.
There’s so much to talk about that I won’t be able to really do the man justice without taking up the entire page. The stellar performances across the board, the moody music, the breathtaking scope, the unbearable tension, the bold choice to shoot in Chicago over New York, the emphasis on practical effects vs. CGI and the groundbreaking use of IMAX cameras all deserve to be mentioned, so there, I just mentioned them. What I find most impressive, though, is the uncompromising vision of the man behind the camera.
I wonder how awesome my hair looks right now...
I attribute every last dollar of The Dark Knight’s nearly $1 billion box office gross to the directorial vision of Christopher Nolan in translating the epic story of Gotham City to the big screen. The film’s title may refer to Batman himself, but it may as well have been titled “Gotham City,” since the first thing that struck me when the credits started to roll was just how much of the film was not even about Batman. Brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan had a monumental task before them in trying to adapt the story of one of pop culture’s most recognizable heroes with 70 years and thousands of stories of history. And just to make it a little bit harder, they had to somehow capture the essence of not one, but two of the character’s most iconic villains in a way that both honored the source material and communicated ideas that strike a chord even with today’s audiences.
Didn't I have a really cool tower with a train through it last time? And before that everything glowed-in-the-dark?
But to get back to the point, it’s not the writing that’s important, because it’s a mistake to think that The Dark Knight is an original story. Like the classic Homeric poems, the story of Gotham City, its heroes and its villains has been retold for decades through many generations. The genius of the director, then, is not that he saw something in these characters that no one else had seen before, it’s in the way he was able to sift through the excess and boil down so many of these unfathomably dense and disparate elements in a way that made sense for his own medium. You think the Joker was scary? So did Alan Moore (writer of the upcoming mega-blockbuster Watchmen) when he wrote The Killing Joke back in 1988, which Christopher Nolan hand-delivered to Heath Ledger in preparation for his role. Felt for the plight of Commissioner Gordon, who had to choose between working with Batman (implicitly condoning vigilante justice) or risk letting the city fall into the hands of the mob? What about the tragic story of Harvey Dent, the man who believed so strongly in the goodness of the system that seeing it ultimately fail drove him to complete madness? Then check out Batman: Year One, Gotham Central, or The Long Halloween. Chris Nolan did.
In Japan, the Joker says, "Hai! Cheeeezu," and somehow it's still scary.
These are ideas that say an enormous amount about so many universal themes: the greyness of right and wrong, the limits of the human psyche, our capacity to find hope in a sea of despair, and, of course, the true nature of villainy and heroism. Now try telling your friends that you learned about these things in a comic book. “Ha! You mean those kids’ books with the silly pictures and the big words that say SMASH and POW?” But tell them that you saw all of those same things in The Dark Knight, and I suspect you’ll be met with a little more respect.
Christopher Nolan has made it socially acceptable for people to argue in public over the motivations of the guy with green hair and white face-paint, the justifications of the man with a melted face and a split-personality, and the iconography of the dude in the cape and rubber suit. That deserves a trophy in my book.
Well unfortunately, I’m not sure there’s much to bash in Sulmoney’s #4 pick of The Dark Knight. What can I say? Even a broken clock is right twice a day.
…Sulmoney is the broken clock. Here, finally, is my #3.
Doubt
In Doubt, a curmedgeonly nun and Catholic school principal (Meryl Streep) works tirelessly to expel the progressive and popular priest (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who may or may not have molested a young boy, but let’s clear up one misconception right off the bat: this is not a movie about a Catholic priest molesting a young boy. In a way, that hot-button issue is simply what Hitchcock would call the “MacGuffin.” It’s only a device that motivates the characters and inspires the real meat of this film, which essentially boils down to 5 or 6 long, drawn-out scenes of brutally uncomfortable verbal conflicts riddled with subtext and unspoken implications. Much like Frost/Nixon, Doubt is a film about argumentation and ideological clash. Incidentally, both films draw on source material from the theater, but while Frost/Nixon adapted the subject matter with a familiar underdog structure, Doubt moves in an entirely different direction and delivers a moviegoing experience unlike any other.
Ah, child molestation. It warms the heart.
Doubt is an indictment of certainty, which seems a little obvious to say the least, so let me redo that: Doubt is an indictment of certainty. With this film, writer-director John Patrick Shanley (who also penned the play on which the film is based) has crafted a Rorschach test so ambiguous that it’s really a test of the viewer’s own biases. The film never even comes close to presenting the audience with enough evidence to make a valid assessment of guilt, but every viewer will likely come out of it with their own reasons for leaning one way or the other. It’s the ultimate form of audience participation, but anybody foolish enough to believe they’ve really “solved” the mystery has likely missed the point of the film entirely.
The scene where Father Flynn mistakes Amy Adams for a young boy.
And then there’s the cast. The film relies hugely on individual performances, so it’s very fortunate that the screen is populated with some of the best actors to ever grace the big screen. As much as I liked watching Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio rip into each other for 2 hours in Revolutionary Road, the two of them got nothing on Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, though the Golden Globe voters would have you believe otherwise. In Doubt, these screen legends imbue every line with an intensity that’s just uncanny, and they do it all without shouting at the top of their lungs, growling all their lines, or smacking their lips while changing voices.
I haven’t even mentioned the supporting work of Viola Davis in one of the film’s most shocking reveals, the fantastic subtleties of the dialogue, or the pitch-perfect cinematography by Roger Deakins, who has made a career out of finding beauty in the mundane, but they’re all part of the laundry list of reasons why it’s a shame this film won’t receive the attention it deserves come Oscar time.
Well, I think we have Wall-E covered pretty extensively. And I am sure that we will be seeing my #4 movie pick come up in your top 3 sooner rather than later, and I beat you to it once again. Again, Wall-E is a transcendent animated film, one that has universal appeal, and it is money in the bank for Best Animated Feature at the upcoming Academy Awards. We will find out in the morning if it has enough love to crash the presumed locked in 5 for Best Picture (The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Dark Knight, Frost/Nixon, Milk and Slumdog Millionaire).
Enough foreplay, on to the biggest blockbuster since Titanic.
The Dark Knight
The Dark Knight. THE comic book movie to end all comic book movies. Nearly $1 billion in worldwide gross revenue. The movie event of not only the summer, but all of 2008. But we know all that already. We have story after story about The Dark Knight, and frankly, I overdosed on it. We have all seen it, and we all recognize the genius in every aspect of the film, from Christopher Nolan’s expert direction, the wonderful cinematography by Wally Pfister, the score by Hans Zimmer and James Newton Howard, to the no need to mention it anymore iconic performance by the late great Heath Ledger. The only thing that I take offense to in the critical reception of the film is the seemingly forgotten performance by Aaron Eckhart in the tragic role of Harvey Dent/Two Face. Good thing I get to use this as my soap box to fight for him.
I really really believe in Harvey Dent
For all intents and purposes, the main story of The Dark Knight is the rise and fall of Harvey Dent. Even the title of the film indirectly references what Harvey Dent represented to the city of Gotham, as he was supposed to be their White Knight. For everything that Batman could do for the city in secrecy and in the cover of night, Harvey Dent could do in the light of day without hiding underneath a mask. Batman realizes this, and if there is one thing that he would want, it would be to be able to put his alter ego behind him, live his life as Bruce Wayne, and support Harvey Dent to the end of his days. One even gets the impression that Bruce Wayne wishes he was Harvey Dent. The first half of the film we are brought along through his biggest legal victories, and how he has cleaned up Gotham City to the best of his ability. This however leads to the coming out of The Joker, and we see the frustration of fighting a losing fight, the breaking of a good man’s spirit with the loss of his love, the subsequent birth of Two Face, and his final shameful acts.
Cue Daddy Yankee's Gasolina
Aaron Eckhart, lost amongst all the (well deserved) acclaim for Heath Ledger, merits recognition for what he brought to The Dark Knight. In his portrayal of Harvey Dent, Eckhart is the pulse of the film. As Two Face, he creates an absolutely terrifying villain that had too short of a shelf life in Nolan’s Bat-universe. Allowing us to come along for every rise and fall of his emotonal rollercoaster during the course of the film is a true triumph of acting, and Eckhart’s performance should elevate him to the upper echelon of Hollywood. When you rewatch The Dark Knight over and over for the rest of eternity, amidst all the wonderful pieces of the film, remember Aaron Eckhart as Harvey Dent, Gotham’s White Knight.
The Feature Preachers 